Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Freeze in the Dark

One of the crackpot schemes hatched to "fight" the crackpot theory that carbon dioxide emissions are killing the planet is "Carbon Sequestration", basically capturing atmospheric CO2 and pumping it deep into the ocean or injecting it into oil wells to trap it far under ground. It's inconvenient and expensive, but now there's another reason to dislike it: it's said to be as bad as nuclear waste:
A Danish climate scientist has published a paper criticising carbon sequestration - the idea of dealing with CO2 emissions by stuffing the greenhouse gas away into underground or deep-sea storage where it can't affect the atmosphere.

...

“The dangers of carbon sequestration are real," insists Shaffer. "We should greatly limit CO2 emissions in our time to reduce the need for massive carbon sequestration and thus reduce unwanted consequences and burdens over many future generations from the leakage of sequestered CO2.”

The prof says that deep-ocean sequestration is a definite no-no, as it means "grave problems for deep sea life" right off and the carbon gets back into the atmosphere quite fast, too.

The more commonly advocated plan of pumping CO2 into disused oil or gas fields doesn't meet with Shaffer's approval either. He points out that these subterranean/subsea reservoirs are scarcely leak-proof.

So shut up and freeze in the dark. And all those poor people who will be hurt bu this - hey, there are too many people on the planet anyway! In any case, a place in the keep-the-lights-and-heat-on lifeboats has already been reserved for Prof. Gary Shaffer of the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen, so there's no room for them anyway.

What, don't you love Mother Gaia?

3 comments:

  1. So... in essence, we need to be afraid because the CO2 that won't hurt us might escape from subterranean/subsea sequestering places and not hurt us all over again.

    You know, I showed my Grand Daughter the old "I stole your nose" trick with my thumb the other day. She figured out it was a scam in less than 5 minutes. Its a pity these scientists don't have analytical skills on par with an 18 month old.

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  2. A few years back, a company was selling a carbon sequestration scheme that was called "the Geritol solution". They literally fertilized the oceans with an iron solution to cause algae blooms. The algae then absorbed CO2 out of the air, locked it into their now-rapidly growing little cells and obligingly died off.

    Nobody seemed to question what happened after that, when the dead algae started to decompose, and give off said CO2. Nobody seemed to say this was like phosphate runoff from laundry soap (remember that?), that caused algae blooms and got phosphates outlawed.

    I could start a business like this, but I have this darned ethical system that keeps me from profiting off idiots. Even though I know they would willingly give me money and be happy to buy the carbon credits. It just wouldn't be right.

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  3. Paladin, that's awesome. Forget "Are you smarter than an eighth grader?" Now it's "Are you smarter than an 18 month old?" (It's a solid fact that you're NOT cuter, so you'd better be smarter).

    Graybeard, life would be so much easier without scruples ...

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